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Aviation History
1981
1981 - 0028.PDF
Nr RIGHT International, 3 January 1981 Military flight safety review 1980 T HIS survey of military accidents and incidents in 1980 includes for the first time foreign military air arms. It must be remembered, how ever, that not all air arms are as forthcoming with accident data as their colleagues in the UK Services. This listing therefore is not claimed to be complete, but serves as the basis for future' assessments of acci dent-rate changes. Some military accidents will not come to light un less they are witnessed by a member of the public. The statistics of the Eastern Bloc would make fascinating reading but will never be made known in the West. The UK armed forces, on the other hand, having "come in from the cold" in 1979 and decided to publish acci dent causes, seem to have fared well from the decision. Directly, the pre vious uninformed and speculative re ports of some of the media have been quelled although "garden fence" eye-witness reports are still used in Press, TV and radio reports to add local colour to stories. The hackneyed phraseology of some reports, which did nothing to increase public confi dence in aviation in general and miliL tary flying in particular, has all but disappeared. To the surprise of many, it has been found that Joe Public is not as dumb as was thought. Left in the dark he quite naturally made his own assumptions and, as a layman, was usually wrong. Knowledge stamps out fear. The UK public is now not as vociferous: about low flying as it was. This is not to say that they like it, just that now they have an increased understanding of the reasons for it, low flying is more acceptable. Likewise with accidents, the lay public did have the habit of lumping all military accidents together and considering all military flying and aircraft as dangerous. Given the reason for an accident in simple terms, the public is now aware that aeroplanes are machines and, like all machines, sometimes go wrong. Hav ing removed the mystique, the fear has been allayed and the result is an increased acceptance of the problems of military aviation. The very nature of military flying dictates that the chances of an acci dent are high in training. Mid-air collisions are more frequent in the military sphere than the civil. But only one of the collisions listed is between conflicting traffic, that of the F-lll and Cessna 206 over New Mexico in February. The others were between aircraft of the same forma tion on the same mission. Birdstrikes again take their toll. En-route birdstrikes will always be a hazard, but those on or in the vicinity of an airfield can be combatted. Bird control takes many forms, from falconry to the playing of recorded bird distress calls or pop music (Elton John being particularly effec tive), to frighten birds away. If the birds see the aircraft they will try to keep out of the way. Put your landing lights on during the day, it helps. Waste management also helps to keep the scavenging varieties of bird away. Bird migration routes are seasonal and fairly well known; brief on them and stay clear. The ingestion of foreign bodies into1 a jet enginei is always a cause for concern. An effective sweeping programme for the aircraft ground manoeuvring area (GMA) will help alleviate the problem. Education of personnel who operate in the GMA is also' effective. On the maintenance side, strict control of tools is neces sary. Centralised tool holdings with shadow boards and a check in/out system helps to avoid the classic spanner in the works. Wirestrikes are usually the bane of helicopter pilots but have brought down fast jets. This year's listing in cludes a Luftwaffe Starfighter which hit power lines during a low-level training mission. At that sort of speed it is next to impossible to see wires and react in time; extra care must be taken over route hazard plot ting and briefing. Maps must be kept up to date. For the helicopter pilot, the problem of wires and pylons dic tates a good lookout and crew co operation. Several companies are working on wire - proximity warning systems. Some rely on the electro-magnetic field from the current in wires. Sooner or later an unsuspecting heli copter crew will fly into a wire which has been switched off. The answer may lie with some form of milli- metric radar or forward-looking in frared system. Together with a cable- cutter as fitted to Canadian Kiowas (See Flight, June 28, page 1449) the fatality rate from wirestrikes should drop but the hazard may be com pounded if some environmentalists get their way. These people want pylons to be painted to blend with the surrounding countryside. Overconfidence again takes its toll. The line between the aggression needed for military flying and taking unnecessary risks is a thin one. At least two, possibly three, aircraft have been lost this year through, to put it politely, over-exuberance. The loss of a Dutch NF-5 was caused by the pilot "beating-up" his parents' house. The first Sea Harrier loss was caused by the aircraft striking the Invincible's ski-ramp during a low pass, presumably to impress the mem bers of the Press on board. Very im pressive they found it, too. Apparently the Soviet Tu-16 Badger which crashed in the Sea of Japan was "buzzing" a Japanese trawler, taking it in turns with another Badger to see who could get lowest. He won and took six crewmen with him. The number of fatalities in acci dents to aircraft fitted with the latest types of ejection seats is thought- provoking. Why, once a crash is in evitable, do< the crews stay with the aircraft? Why are back-seaters with no controls staying in the cockpit? Could it be that, subconsciously, the crews think: "I've got a zero-zero seat, perhaps I'll just try one more relight/spin recovery?" Maybe, where command ejection is fitted, the back- seater subconsciously relies on the pilot to initiate ejection and the pilot, preoccupied with trying to fly out of trouble, leaves it too late. Zero-zero should perhaps be known as zero-zero3 that is, zero-airspeed, zero height, zero* pitch, zero roll, zero sink rate. The altitude needed for safe ejection increases rapidly with bank angle—even at zero sink rate. The altitude gain needed with bank-angle increase is non-Jinear. Get out in plenty of time.
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